


at the end, before everything

by callixto, DianaSolaris



Series: exchange fic [2]
Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Pre-Canon, Stalking, Temporary Character Death, The Different Story References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 06:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15357795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callixto/pseuds/callixto, https://archiveofourown.org/users/DianaSolaris/pseuds/DianaSolaris
Summary: Mami wakes up with a head full of dreams and a broken neck, slowly re-aligning itself.





	at the end, before everything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



_Ladybird, ladybird,_

_Fly away home,_

_Your house is on fire_

_And your children all gone;_

  
Mami wakes up with a head full of dreams and a broken neck, slowly re-aligning itself. She hasn’t decided just yet which is more of an inconvenience – after all, the broken neck will heal, but the dreams have an alarming tendency to stick around even when she isn’t paying attention. They’re dreams full of blood and twisted metal, and sometimes even after she’s been awake for plenty of time, they cast long shadows over whatever she sees.

Today, however, she’s more concerned with the fact that Kyouko Sakura is – once again – missing. She understands, of course. She knows what grief feels like.

Mami stands up carefully, holding the back of her hair. Then she wraps a ribbon around her distorted neck, gritting her teeth before yanking on the ribbon and snapping her neck back into place. Her vision blacks out for a moment, but the pain subsides easily enough. 

Pain is interesting like that. The body never completely adjusts to it, anymore than you can pretend not to hear an alarm bell or a siren; but Mami has figured out how to live with it. It’s a simple trick – count to ten, take a deep breath and tell yourself you’ll do a better job of killing yourself next time.

It’s very difficult to break your neck without also obtaining a head injury.

Mami tells herself that’s the reason for the stars dancing at the corners of her eyes, the whisper of fur past one of her ankles. The witch’s heart had rolled to a stop by her twitching corpse’s feet long before she woke, and she tucks it now where she keeps her own.

She counts herself lucky that Kyouko hadn’t found Mami chasing after her or seen her fall. There’s something humiliating in the thought of a witness to her untimely death.

Something deep in her chest is still trembling. Every death, she worries she won’t wake -- that she’ll have made her wish and fallen for nothing, meaning nothing to anyone. If Mami were to fall defending Kyouko, she thinks, she would be happy. Perhaps Kyouko would cry, would tell her how much she cared at the end.

But Kyouko Sakura has left her to play hero on her own, twirling on gilded puppet strings.

Kyubey’s sweetly taunting voice chimes in her ears, that soft brush of fur against her newly-healed neck sending a shiver down her spine. _Better luck next time,_ he seems to say.

She hasn’t caught Kyouko in her territory in nearly a week or followed the flash of red and discarded apple cores to her heart - Mami isn’t foolish enough to confront her, to break the careful boundary line she’s drawn, but it comforts her to know where that girl has gone in _her_ city.  Her own apartment feels empty, now. It had been only too easy to take what inheritance she was owed to carve out a new life for herself, shaped around her role and requirement of a lack of nosy neighbors; it would be petty of her to cast it aside now that she only associates her home with the flashes of life Kyouko filled the silence with.

\-- And so, it makes sense in an ugly, hidden part of her to sneak into Kyouko’s, so much the same.

Kyouko never changed the locks, too certain of Mami’s much benighted heroism to fear anything of hers - and she oughtn’t! Mami would never hurt another magical girl, even one turned traitor - but it makes something curl purring and smug under her breastbone.

The witch’s gem, gone warm with Mami’s own heat that’s all that marks her living form, she leaves for Kyouko on her pillow. She only wants to be sure of her safety, of her continued survival. There can’t be anything wrong with that.

She thinks fondly of Kyouko’s reaction, of her dear friend’s heart pounding at the reminder of Mami, and starts off to her next death.

  


**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry this is late! i had some irl issues come up, and i couldn't have finished it without e helping me out. happy everywoman exchange!!


End file.
